Other events, links, news… Archive

Series of interviews were written to present each PI of the CIG.
Most of them are already available on the new CIG Report’s website, and every week we will be displaying one of them in the newsletter.

“Let there be light!”

Shade avoidance response in plants

Plants are weird forms of life: they just sit around all day whilst the sun provides their elixir of life: light. Arabidopsis thaliana, for example, has no less than 5 different families of photoreceptors, which capture light with great eagerness. But what happens if the neighbouring oak tree gets too big and casts a dark and gloomy shadow over its surroundings? Believe it or not, the tiny Arabidopsis has seen this coming from the very beginning – a phenomenon termed “neighbor detection” – and has already taken all possible precautions to secure the species’ survival. Prof. Fankhauser and his research team are trying to unravel the mechanisms that control the shade avoidance response in plants: a highly sophisticated machinery, involving hormonal signals and all-encompassing transcriptional events that provoke the appropriate physiological and development responses. Welcome to the world of plants.

Series of interviews were written to present each PI of the CIG.
Most of them are already available on the CIG Report 2015-2016’s website, and every week we will be displaying one of them in the newsletter.

The role of translation in circadian rhythms

“I have always wanted to go “all the way”, says Prof. David Gatfield: “doing research from the cellular to the systemic level, deep into the physiology and even the behavior of an animal.” As it turns out, unraveling the machinery behind circadian rhythms offers him the opportunity to live his scientific dream. Indeed, in higher animals most vital processes fluctuate during the day in an orderly fashion: a complex process which is only poorly understood. Prof. Gatfield and his team are trying to understand the fundamental role of RNA and translation – considered far too long a default process in chronobiology – in the control of oscillating biological processes.

Series of interviews were written to present each PI of the CIG.
Most of them are already available on the CIG Report 2015-2016’s website, and every week we will be displaying one of them in the newsletter.

Cell-cell signaling in organ size control

Prof. Hamaratoglu and her team are using the wonderful tools of Drosophila genetics in trying to steal from Nature one of its preciously guarded secrets: “How does an organ “know” when to stop growing after reaching a pre-programmed size?” Given the fact that multiple biological processes are involved – cell division and proliferation, differentiation, tissue movements and programmed cell death –, the question as to which regulatory mechanisms are at play and how they are interconnected goes at the heart of understanding the principles that control growth and shape of a biological body.

“You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren”William Henry Hudson (1841 – 1922)